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2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

cnet.com

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Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#21

Post by FireBeyond »

adam_arthur wrote: post #7
tpmx wrote: post #3

Tl;dr: The critical flaw is random braking in the mandatory crash avoidance system because they replaced radar with cameras + computer vision which has a lot of false positives in their current production software release. I'm curious: Is the reason cost, availability or ideology?

I would guess a bit of both. In theory cameras should work fine, given that humans are pretty good at driving by just using our eyes. Of course vision will never be theoretically better than radar/laser. But should be good enough in the long run, and cheaper/more flexible. My question is, what level of resolution and processing power is necessary to interpret inputs accurately though? Just anecdotally, seems like aut…

The cameras in a Tesla are not 576mp (which is the closest approximation or estimate of our eyes), and nor do they have 21 stops of dynamic range (same).

And they also don't have 16+ years, minimum, of 24/7 "non-machine learning" to augment their judgment.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#22

Post by ushakov »

dylan604 wrote: post #17
ushakov wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i know someone who has a fully-charged model 3 they had spent extra 20k euros to improve it for instance: they added custom roof sealing, because it was getting too loud inside when driving on the highways and then they (tastefully) refitted it with custom-made carbon elements on the inside and the outside tuned/improved Teslas are not that uncommon if you know some owners

Other than the noise sealing, that doesn't really say much negative about the car though (but that could be personal preference). That just says the person you know has plenty of money to customize the interior of the car in ways the manufacture doesn't offer.

those two are the ones i can recollect right now, but there were definitely other issues as well

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#23

Post by shituonui »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #4

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well. The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait. The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (…

>Autopilot works great.

I don't think anyone claims otherwise on the older models. The problem is twofold:

1. They promised "Full Self Driving" and delivered ordinary driver assistance.

2. The vision-based approach just plain does not work.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#24

Post by dylan604 »

adam_arthur wrote: post #11

While it's pretty obvious that many manufacturers are coming out with their own EVs, there seems to be something of a bubble that isn't paying attention or totally ignores this. It will be interesting to see how the EV space evolves once there are mass amounts of competitor vehicles available/on the road. Specifically interesting to see how it affects valuations for these companies. I suspect Tesla's growth rate will…

>E.g. F-150 vs Cybertruck.

I'm in Texas, and there are stereotype supporting large number of truck owners around. Of the ones I've spoken to about Cybertruck, not one of them are interested in the body. People like how their Fords/Dodge/Chevy trucks look, so taking the design so far away from the norm just seems like an odd decision. Worse than the original Prius design.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#25

Post by tziki »

tpmx wrote: post #3

Tl;dr: The critical flaw is random braking in the mandatory crash avoidance system because they replaced radar with cameras + computer vision which has a lot of false positives in their current production software release. I'm curious: Is the reason cost, availability or ideology?

It's widely thought to be due to the chip shortage. Tesla made numerous other adjustments due to chip shortage too.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#27

Post by shituonui »

drewg123 wrote: post #16
LeoPanthera wrote: post #4

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well. The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait. The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (…

[ slightly edited version of a reply i made a week ago on the CR article]: I have a 2017 Model X that I bought new. The EV part is great, its everything else that sucks. Since I've had it, I've taken it for service for the following: o Arrived w/o Tow pkg (Tesla "forgot" it, was installed via service center appt) o falcon wing doors improperly adjusted, leading to wind noise and water intrusion o Loud wind noise and…

PHEVs make more sense to me anyway. For the majority of trips they run off the battery which makes them just as good as a BEV, but they have no problems with range and they are a whole lot cheaper.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#28

Post by rconti »

Jare wrote: post #15
Shank wrote: post #8

> I can't conclusively say that it's because of the missing radar, but I can say that our Model Y is bad at detecting obstructions ahead. Really, really bad. The big issue is false positives, a problem that has become known as "phantom braking" among Tesla owners. Basically, the car often gets confused and thinks there's an obstacle ahead and engages the automatic emergency braking system. You get an instant, unwante…

The flaw was not unique to their car, or new at all. They describe how owners have already nicknamed the issue, so > unless every shipping car has the same problem Seems close enough.

I mean, "phantom braking" seems like a pretty obvious term for such behavior. Never had it on my laser cruise-equipped Golf R, nor on our radar-equipped Tesla, but it's immediately intuitive what they mean by it.

I will say, the Tesla needed to have the "brake warning" moved to 'late' from 'medium' to not making annoying alerts from time to time, which is something my Golf did also, but even more rarely. I only had the Golf for about 30k miles because I somewhat-unexpectedly bought the Telsa 3, which is now up over 53k miles.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#29

Post by martythemaniak »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #4

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well. The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait. The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (…

I've had a Model3 for three and a half years now (very early VIN). It's been our primary and for much of the time, only car. It's been fantastic, and I've recommended it to everyone, and three people I know have purchased 3s/Ys as well and have also been super satisfied. Is it flawless? No - upon delivery the read badge was missing and the glove box had a gap. Went to get it fixed. Year after that the front arms needed replacing. A few months ago the charge port actuator stopped working (you can still lift it manually) - clicked a few buttons in the app and a guy came by to fix it on our driveway.

We have a secondary ICEV and we both hate it and mock it. It is actually one the best ICEVs in its class, but fundamentally, all ICEVs are irredeemably terrible. It needs replacing soon and I've been through every single EV out there considering alternatives, but in the end we have to replace it with a Model Y.

Teslas are not flawless cars, but they are, simply, the best cars.

Re: 2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

#30

Post by mulcahey »

Commenting just to say that I've had a Model 3 since 2017 with zero issues. Anecdotally, I have tons of friends with Teslas and haven't heard a single nightmare service or build quality issue from any of them.

Autopilot has been great -- probably over half my miles driven. Still a work-in-progress for city streets but FSD improvements have been pretty impressive from what I've observed on YouTube.

Service has been pretty great too actually -- the appointment booking process I just went through to get new tires felt like the future since it's completely through the app. My only wish is that they had better loaner availability in CA. In TX the availability does seem better though since I moved here.

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